I just found this out yesterday and I couldn't stop laughing for hours.
A friend decided to take a break from FFXI only to come back to find his character deleted. He was a Elvaan 40+ SAM with leaping boots and emperor's hairpin and 2 snipper's ring ... the whole shebang!!! Impressive stuff... anyway... It's all gone!
So he had to start from scratch. He thought that he had been away too long and SE deleted his character. Which technically shouldn't happen. So he accepted his fate and made a Mithra instead. He is now a Lv20 THF with sub and all...
Anyway... yesterday, his brother was leveling his Mithra for him... came across some1... and found out the name of his old character, and everything started to make sense...
Apparently his mom (yes she plays!! and his 2 other brothers as well... all 4 of them in the family hooked on the game) thought her son has quit the game for good, so she logged in, gave half of his stuff away, sold the other half, and deleted his character. OMFG!!!
And during this past month, she was sitting and chatting happily away in the LS like nothing ever happened, even when we were arguing what might have happened to his account.
I feel sorry for the guy but I just can't stop laughing myself silly when I heard about it!!
So next time when u see Valkryea ... give him a /comfort ... k ? ^^